


the WE MUST LOVE

by nflying



Category: ONF (Band)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Blood, Hallonfween, M/M, Puppets, bc i had to make it spooky n dark right since its not even halloween themed, direct correlation w the song lyrics mhm, if u saw dramatic view increase on twml performance within the past month THATS ON ME, insane lil jayers, personification of spacetime, take a shot every time i use some variant of the colors red or white, that's p much it idk what else to tag, uhhh, yeah it gets steamy at the end kinda but like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27219265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nflying/pseuds/nflying
Summary: How long has it been? Since the clock stopped ticking?How long has it been? Since the world froze around us?Did we lose our memories?In our past or in our future, or maybe in a different world?I don’t know what happened.But, I do know one thing—
Relationships: Kim Hyojin/Lee Seungjoon | J-Us
Comments: 43
Kudos: 52
Collections: Hallonfween 2020





	the WE MUST LOVE

**Author's Note:**

> DEACTIVATED SCHOOL AND A HEALTHY SLEEP SCHEDULE TO CRANK THIS OUT IN A MONTH THE SHIT I DO !!! THE SHIT I DOOOOOOOOO is just continuing to feed the most popular ship tag on here yeah ok
> 
> but god if i read over this one more time i will claw my eyes out so i decided to just suck it up and post lmfao i hope it's dark enough for hallonfween if not then FUCK ME !!!!!!

How long has it been? Since the clock stopped ticking? 

How long has it been? Since the world froze around us?

_Did we lose our memories?_

_In our past or in our future, or maybe in a different world?_

_I don’t know what happened._

_But, I do know one thing—_

[]

From here, he watched over him, watched as splinters sliced his skin and glimmers ran down his cheeks, and his fingers tangled in miles of straggling string: the binds that restrained the last of this fragile chaos. And himself? Red—a soul stained crimson.

Time and time again, the crimson boy would play. Dancing dolls dangling from his fingertips, a sublime orchestra conducted by the faux symphony ringing at the back of his mind. From here, he watched over him, and he could hear it: the percussion and the strings, the grandeur that seeped through his carmine crazed skull and leaked into the age-old air.

And here, the doll watched. Marionette after marionette, he rehearsed. Puppet after puppet, he destroyed. The story was never worth finishing; the scheme was never good enough, the boy would utter, at the edge of incoherency. He annihilated them all. The doll watched as he crumbled, too, one too many times, in this deep hall of void. The vacuum of insanity that was gradually reclaiming what was theirs. 

And here, the doll pitied. Oh, he wanted to reach out, yearned to caress that pretty, tear-streaked face until all that those wild, bright eyes could focus on was him, and only him. But he couldn’t. He could only wait. Perhaps one day, the boy will break the last of his toys at hand, and then he will reach up to the top of the decrepit shelves, up above, and he will break him too. Him, the pristine snow-haired prince, uncorrupted yet by those shaky and anguished hands. Invisibly, he grinned. Perhaps one day, at those hands, he will fall apart, joining the other meaningless beings that have permanently perished over the decades.

Decades. Centuries? The doll internally scoffed at the thought. 

How long has it been? Since time became irrelevant? 

(Time: blatantly, a nuisance; possibly, a nemesis.)

From that brings forth another inquiry: what led them here? What guided them to this timeless dimension? To this unending sequence of scarlet pain and white unsatiated yearning?

This, the doll couldn’t devise the answer to. 

The answer, little does he know, he has; it has always been in him, somewhere deep inside of him, sedimented under layers of chalky monochrome and ingots of intaken, thrashing red.

So, you ask, what is it?

Well, let’s start from the beginning of the millenium.

[]

Our story begins with two interwoven entities, labeled by the universe as Seungjun and Hyojin.

They met for the first time under clear azure skies. They introduced themselves in the shade of a charming sycamore tree. They shared their first kiss on a sequestered rooftop, purple twilight spreading before them.

And they did it again. 

They met for the first time under clear teal skies. They introduced themselves in the shade of a delightful birch tree. They shared their first kiss on a quiet shoreline, dainty breeze threading through them.

And again. 

They met for the first time under clear cerulean skies. They introduced themselves in the shade of a sweet mahogany tree. They shared their first kiss on a running train, extending towards freedom as the land flew past them.

And again. 

They met for the first time under clear cyan skies. They introduced themselves in the shade of a tender hickory tree. They shared their first kiss in a great meadow, the scent of spring daisies wafting around them.

Each of these times, one person retained something forbidden, something obscure slowly piling up behind his temples. The memories of previous pasts sprinkled on his psyche like blurred sequins, a silver canvas incompletely flecked with lustrous splatters, like scattered fragments of a mirror.

The scintillating blemishes built up in his starry mind over the years, and he adapted with them. At first, they were unnoticeable. Then, they came in the subtle form of déjà vu. Then, he started seeing them. Inexplicable sensations fired through his neurons when he closed his eyes and attempted to smear some of those inky blotches into his grasp. He had caught glimpses of the murky inverse reflections and felt the traces of emotions that accompanied, but he could never quite discern them.

Until, one time, he did. 

It was mysterious, but it was galvanizing—the way it snapped all together on that pivotal day. The cryptic shards amassed over repeated lifetimes, a few more nostalgic stars joining his cerebral galaxy each time, and eventually, they accumulated sufficiently enough to align in syzygy, frame by frame, piece by piece, to solve the puzzle, to elucidate the enigma strung out in his head. Suddenly, everything became clear the instant that looking glass formed. Through the figurative peephole, Seungjun saw it all: every first encounter, every word spoken to each other, every intimate moment they shared.

And from that point on, life was a collectible. 

No, ‘life’ wasn’t right anymore, he perceived. Through a _life_ unlocked a series of _lives_ , each with the same meaning as the last, albeit the potentialities wandered infinite, one after the next.

He met with the same boy in every timeline, still, of course; he had no other will. Every road he took and every path he navigated inescapably circled back to him. Hyojin was his sempiternal consciousness’s worth. 

Seungjun had made a resolution then. He took advantage of his newfound awareness to make sure it was perfect for the other. He stepped only on familiar tiles, treading with care and heed. He planned and calculated. Hyojin was the centerpiece of his rotation, the central gravity of his orbit; he couldn’t mess it up for him. 

Or could he?

Somewhere in his adrenalized brain rests the underlying question mark: what brought him back? Or, more specifically, more intriguingly, what brought his mind back?

He kept track of every Earth he has walked since the inception of the epiphany; Hyojin was always the same—a smile like the sun, the Milky Way swirling in his eyes, and storing not a single hint of recognition for Seungjun. It was all automatic, Seungjun noted: he blinks and he’s back, in another variation of the transient life he previously had, with all recollections of that one, and the myriad before it, magically intact. So, he asked, what was the force behind it all? 

What pulled him forth? To the luxury, omniscient peak of the universe? 

What pushed him forwards? To Hyojin, every revolution he made back around death?

(Perhaps he shouldn’t be wondering. Perhaps he should simply take what he was given for granted. This idea had passed through him once, but unknowing of its weight, he swept it aside.)

 _Space and time are relative to each other,_ ancient physicists claim. _One cannot exist without the other._

Seungjun abided by that understanding at the very beginning, his initial multitude of lifetimes wasted timing every encounter and plotting each maneuver. But throughout long, recurrent eons of following Hyojin, the boy came upon the realization that _time_ was, in fact, not a factor by which tied them together. It was _space_ : the infinite dimensions, the uncountable realities, the boundless universes that linked up in a shatterproof chain. The eternal duo was tugged through that, mercilessly entangled souls reconverging at every waypoint.

(How exactly he found that out remains unascertained, or perhaps the secret was stolen by time. Maybe it hit him spontaneously by the effect of an unpredictable shift in subatomic particles, or perhaps the cosmos gifted that enlightenment to him itself, to toy with him, a callous curiosity, simply to see what he would do.)

With that, Seungjun knew all that was left to know.

All that was left was a singular priority.

In each convoluted timeline he was thrown into, his sole aspiration stayed invariable, equally as impassioned as the last and never diminishing—unwavering like his destiny, unchanging like his memories. His sole aspiration, that is, walking down the prolonged pathway leading inevitably to Hyojin: the one that gradually, yet naturally, unveiled itself over his unlimited sets of limited years.

_Traveling to disparate stars that have lost even their name._

_It feels like I took a long journey there, searching only for you._

[]

Seungjun harnessed that control.

 _Seungjun harnessed that illusion of control,_ time would say.

Harboring exclusive knowledge, he perceived things differently. His cognition was changed (clearer, keener—for the better or worse?). His mind was freer (another layer of consciousness unlocked—did it empower him or delude him?). The world unraveled before him. With information came temptation; he possessed power. He began crossing his own formerly set boundaries, taking shortcuts he had never noticed before. 

It escalated quickly from there.

Ripples evolved into crashing waves. Seungjun was rougher than before, with the lurking reassurance that he had interminable times to retry. It dawned on him, with sickening awe, that Hyojin would always return, untainted, ready for him to take.

Their simultaneous, short-lived existences were formulaic; he had grown used to them long ago. Seungjun incarnates at 16, opens his eyes to Seoul city streets with nothing but a built-in history and the clothes on his back. He carries along with his day, knowing exactly who he is and where he should go. 

In a few long-drawn years, he finds Hyojin, as always. 

They love; they must, and they always do. 

In a few more fleeting years, the pair breathes their final breath before 29, as always. 

Every transitory life of theirs ended by each other’s side or in each other’s arms, as if they couldn’t die any other way. (Maybe they couldn’t.) Tragic, dire deaths ordained the ends of each timeline. 

Yet, they were content, fulfilled that they had one another, as always. 

Something about that rhythm didn’t satisfy him anymore. He needed more than that. 

Seungjun could do more than that.

The interval between rebirth and reunion began to feel tedious. Impatience and irritation clawed at his soul, at the ribbon of fate tethered around their ankles that stretched too, excruciatingly long. These are the lackluster moments, the precious minutes that he could be spending with Hyojin instead.

A decision was made then. 

He stopped waiting on the cord of destiny. 

That resolution he made lifetimes ago drained down into the abyss, swallowed by a caliginous sea, promptly lost to the cloak of time. The subconscious promise was forgotten; there were no restraints holding him back. His mind was truly free. 

Immoral measures came effortlessly, easier than he imagined: a pick of a pocket, a slash of a knife, a swerve of a vehicle, a flick of a lighter—anything to get him to Hyojin faster. 

_Because nothing else held significance,_ he instilled, and it was true for him.

He met Hyojin under overcast skies. He introduced himself in treeless conurbations. And the kiss—the kiss came too soon. 

But none of that mattered; in the end, Hyojin would always fall for him, no matter how many scars he had inflicted, how many tears he had provoked, how many tempests he had brewed. Because that was what it was meant to be. It was all predictable. 

It was all too simple.

Seungjun didn’t relent on his hedonistic reruns to jubilation, not when the only thing he could ever desire was so easily reachable, his salvation from meaningless existence so wantonly vulnerable just for him. 

It was all too pleasant.

Red stained his hands ever the more often. 

Crimson trickled in front of his eyes. 

(Faintly, he registered Hyojin across the room, staring at him, unmistakable doe eyes filled to the brim with something akin to raw horror. What Seungjun saw, however, was the predetermined potential to turn that fear into fervent fascination. 

Somewhere in his memory, he vaguely recalled the information assiduously gathered from the genesis of this lifetime. The intelligence acquired through wicked methods and nefarious sources, those clues he scavenged so desperately that led him to where he is now: a room of gold, Hyojin in his presence. What was Hyojin this time, a mafia prince? Something like that. Whose blood is drenched on his hands? His train of thought didn’t make it so far as to the answer. Instead, he was fixated on Hyojin: the Hyojin with his back pressing as strenuously into the waxed marble wall as he could, heart pounding erratically beneath ostentatious clothes, breath held visibly tense, eyes trained on the body at Seungjun’s feet, refusing to make direct contact with his psychotic gaze.

A smile crept over Seungjun’s lips. Here was his ineluctable prize of yet another victory achieved. He found the center of his orbit, the object that kept bringing him back; he beat fate to it, once again. All the more time he would have with him in this timeline, or at least the abridged wait he would have to go through to see him, would be worth millions of extra troubles. Euphoria bubbled up inside of him every stride he took towards his boy, closer to his love and his life. 

Hyojin retracted further, eyes wide, attentive and afraid. Seungjun came to a smooth halt, inches before his face. He marveled for a moment, then brushed stained fingers along his trembling cheek.

_You will love me._

_I will become your everything._

_You will know, once a little time passes._

_You will, you will—_

His hand trailed down to the side of his neck, a path of red smeared in its wake. There, his thumb rested gently over the delicate lump on his throat. He felt Hyojin swallow dryly underneath it. He applied just enough pressure, and Hyojin’s breath ceased.

It was at that moment, Seungjun became precisely aware of the amount of power he held. 

He let it soak in, observed with hazy, lidded eyes at the beautiful figure in his palms. He pondered what he could do, _how much_ he could do with him in these neverending realities, and have him return each time, pliant as soon as he was in his hands. 

Like a doll. 

Like a puppet on strings. 

Vivid ideas flooded his head, so fascinating that they threatened to overwhelm, before the door blew off behind him, a gunshot rang, and his vision went white. Mere seconds later, his sight recolored, the world saturated, and bustling Seoul streets materialized before him, a pure white t-shirt clinging onto his skin, unstained. 

And, oh, he knew this procedure way too well.)

_These monstrous realities._

_They keep growing, getting bigger, and they seem like they will collapse over you, but—_

[]

For the red that he induced, wouldn’t it be fair for him to bleed, as well?

The universe concurred. The stars agreed. The world was all too enthusiastic to penalize this wayward creature as deserved, and the galaxy followed pursuit in that ideology. Time watched in anticipated amusement.

It started like this: a slight warp in dimensions, a faster tick of the second hand.

Seungjun couldn’t die without reaching Hyojin first; that was a contract sealed by the stars at the very onset of this game. The commitment has never been breached—so far—but then again, he has never made it to 29 without Hyojin, has he? 

Space and time kept up this little gamble. How difficult could they make it? How much could they shove, twist, mince this obsession? How much until it was too much for his unrelenting spirit?

Inconsistent minutes overlapped crushing hours; roads of bone carved his doomed course and rivers of blood soaked into the thread of fate. Seungjun staggered through it all, round after round, havoc in his wake, seeing nothing but red—his red. 

And then, there was an end.

The universe tired out. The stars got bored. The world became fed up, and the galaxy was not entertained. Time neither cared nor paid attention.

Interest waned. He was no longer of any fun to them anymore. So, they took the underhanded route. 

That time, for the first time and the last, Seungjun didn’t make it to Hyojin.

The next time, he awoke, stiff, to dim walls, collapsed chandeliers, a disarray of dilapidated furniture alongside weary bookshelves, and a teary crimson boy in the midst of it all.

[]

The doll didn’t remember.

The doll didn’t know who he was.

The doll didn’t know why he was here. 

The doll didn’t know how long he has been contained, yet evidently, long enough for the walls to have stripped him blank, bare of reminiscence.

The doll didn’t know who the stunning crimson boy was, who sat before him, scarlet streaking his skin, shining eyes dripping. 

Memories came and went—this he recognized—but eventually, they only went. An inordinate aggregate was ripped from him at some undetermined and immeasurable point in the given unceasing timeline, but one particular statement maintained its vigorous resonance in his dead mind, never declining, never fading. It echoed bold and strong in the presence of the red, notably louder and more desperate when his darling face was in view. The doll didn’t remember many things, deprived of knowledge and devoid of sentience, but this crimson in his view—all he knew was that he needed him.

A flare raged inside of him. It began as a meager flicker, an itch and then a craving; now, it threatened to burn him whole, endeavored to maul him from the inside out, if the tips of his fingers couldn’t touch the vibrant vermillion mayhem once. His hands belonged on him: on his waist, over his chest, around his throat. And himself—he belonged on top of the red, scarlet seeping out under him, into silk spreads and satin curtains.

So, he eyed the carmine limb as it reached up to the top of the decrepit shelves, up above, and watched as a mangled hand connected with his shell of a body. Never in his known existence has he stirred in this forever framework of wooden bones and carved solid flesh, not that he could recollect. 

But, this time, he reached back.

At the very moment those lacerated fingers came into contact with his own, they inelegantly enclosed around him as how a child would clutch a beloved toy, and he was wrenched down with an unhinged type of grace. The fall was not steep. He landed on his feet. 

The first thing he registered was the threadbare Kashan carpet below his shoes. Red and white, though with its pattern harshly tinted sapphire by an unspecified source of luminescence. (Maybe it was the blue moon, taunting them through the barred, shuttered window, jeering from the outside of this prison.) 

He lifted his eyes. A small hand was intertwined with his, gingerly and barely holding on, like the thin strings coiled around its digits. Both were life-sized, and they of the same composition: soft, unlike his primordial, polished wood. It was skin on them, genuine skin—both of them. 

His vision glided up the opposite embroidered sleeve. Enwrapping the arm was fabric of a brilliant cardinal, black chiffon at the opening and a strip of embellished gold. The crimson boy was staring at him, unmistakable doe eyes filled to the brim with shock and whatever resembled the remainder of his humanity.

Something about this felt nostalgic, the doll surmised. He couldn’t place it.

Perhaps he did know him, in a long, distant past. 

(Or maybe, they intersected in a faraway future: an arcane one that rewound, back and back and further back, to the moment they are in now.)

His grasp tightened, pure white against bruised red. He lifted the boy’s hand and led it to his lips, tilting his head forth, snowy strands swinging into his sightline, all the while never breaking the steady gaze he had blazing into the other’s eyes, electricity sparking between them. Carmine stained his unblemished face as he kissed it; he lowered their interlaced hands. 

The doll took a step forward. The boy took a step back.

And again.

And again.

And again, and another, kicking aside the torn marionettes and severed puppets on the ground, until the red hit the hard edge of a worn oak surface. His free hand gripped the rim of the table, ancient by the looks of it, sage by the demeanors of it.

The white took in his every movement, every breath his red made. This was his purpose. 

He scanned over the tabletop, flitting from the dull, timeworn pigment to the velvet throne on the parallel side. Strange images flashed through his mind in an untidy, foreign collage: his red laid out atop the tattered surface, the last of his power relinquished, in open and unreserved submission. Or: him, the alabaster prince, royalty on the cerise throne, with his scarlet boy on his knees and bent at his bidding.

Perhaps that was what it should be.

In an instant, his still unmarked hand was clasping the other’s jaw. The crimson boy’s large, glistening eyes widened further. 

He could see every star cluster in them, every nebula, every supernova across all of time. He could also see the gaping black holes. He let his thumb skim about the tainted claret cheek, smudged with glittering tears, mapping out the constellation resting there that he knew so well.

Before any comprehension—or even coherent panic—could manifest in the red, he crashed his ghostly lips onto the ruby ones. His previously interlinked hand worked its way to the back of the crimson-stained neck. With that, he pulled him closer, incessantly drawing out more of the nectarous sounds, seeking for all that he could so easily extract from that cherry tongue. 

A piece of the cosmos shattered then. The chain of dimensions, realities, universes cracked, fractured, and splintered—the one that was imperishable for so long, setting them through plethoras of agony on an unforgiving, endless repeat. Those very shackles broke, at this revolutionary moment.

He may have forgotten his name; he may have surrendered his identity to the lost streams of time, but he was certain of one thing.

Nothing changed. The couple will infallibly reunite across the barriers and the time loops, and the white will inevitably have his hands on his eternal red again, as always. Because that was what it was meant to be.

_Did we lose our memories?_

_In our past or in our future, or maybe in a different world?_

_I don’t know what happened._

_But, I do know one thing—_

Another dulcet, sultry noise evoked a pitiless tug of red hair, ashen fingers tangled in fiery vermillion locks. Scarlet bled through him; it spilled to the immemorial floor and leaked onto the archaic table supporting him. Here, the stained ivory hand resting on his torso pressed him backwards, until his effervescing maroon blended into the dusky brown of antiquated oak. 

_You will love me._

_I will become your everything._

_You will know, once a little time passes._

_You will, you will—_

They were only two empty boys in a lavish room, illusory of fullness and delusive of worth. 

They were only a duo of whom time had given up on, a dyad that was deposited in a hollow, desolate dimension.

They were only a strained pair, entangled from the start; somewhere and sometime, they were born and doomed—star-crossed, if you will—by the infinite stretch of quantum cords. 

They were only red and white—each purely seeing ivory and carmine, respectively. 

Writhing colors sheathed the air, suffocating one another in the hypnosis of their own ferocious palette. 

Red sobbed, to let them be released. 

White bit harder, dug his nails deeper, to elicit the ardent cries. White drew the attention of the cosmos, to let them be heard.

Then, black.

Our story ends with a blanched doll and a crimson boy, labeled not by the universe.

[]

Our story begins with two interwoven entities, labeled by the universe as Changyoon and Minkyun.

They met for the first time under clear turquoise skies. 

_Tell me why it felt so familiar when your eyes first met mine._

_Maybe our memories were stolen by magic a long, long time ago._

**Author's Note:**

> BONK special thanks to papago and google translate, colorcodedlyrics, and thepunctuationguide dot com ALSO IM SOSOS SOS SO SORRY THE ENDING IS SUPER RUSHED AND BAAaaaAAD but this was the last weekend i had to work on it and i had to get it done in time for hallonfween bc OOOOOOH GAY LIL ONF DISCORD SERVER I WANT YOUR VALIDATION SO BAD HHNNNGHGGHHNNNGG sigh. Shady Lil Anon out and over 
> 
> (fret not i will be back in the onf tag soon tho *laughs painedly*)
> 
> ((painedly isnt a word but my brain is genuinely deep fried from a month of awful sleep deprivation so bear w me))
> 
> and FOR CLARIFICATION !!! JUST IN CASE: _the italics are lyrics directly from the we must love. aka we must love + two lines of moscow moscow at the end_
> 
> [ finally un-anoned on jan. 25, 2021 lmao ]


End file.
